Her fading consciousness chuckled richly when she thought she glimpsed Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist of all time, bending over her, wiry white hair and wrinkled impish face, a mischievous light in his eyes. If she was dying, she was going to be in fine company, indeed. He bent his face close to hers and she managed to whisper, “Drustan.”
“Fascinating,” she thought she heard him remark. “Let’s get her warmed up and put her in the Silver Chamber.”
“But that chamber adjoins Drustan’s,” Nell protested. “ ‘Tis not proper.”
“Propriety be damned. ’Tis the most suitable.”
Gwen didn’t listen further.
Drustan was alive and they were putting her near him. She would rest for a moment.
THE NEXT MORNING
12
“Why must ye live all the way up here, Silvan? Yer like the bald eagle nestin’ on the mount,” Nell said, nudging open the door to his tower chamber—one hundred and three steps above the castle proper—with her hip. “Had to settle on the highest limb, dinna ye?”
Silvan MacKeltar popped his head up out of a book with a bemused expression. A silvery-white mane was sleek about his face, and Nell found him terribly handsome in a sage way, but she’d never tell him that. “I am not bald. I have quite a lot of hair.” He lowered his head again and resumed reading, running his finger across the page.
The man was completely in his own world most of the time, Nell mused. Many were the times she’d wondered how he’d managed to get sons on his wife. Had the woman slammed his tomes shut on his fingers and dragged him off by the ear?
Now, there was a fine idea, she thought, watching him through eyes that did not nor had ever, in the twelve years she’d been there, betrayed one ounce of her feelings for him.
“Drink.” She plunked the mug down on the table next to his book, careful not to spill a drop on his precious tome.
“Not another of your vile concoctions, is it, Nell?”
“Nay,” she said, stony-faced, “ ‘tis another of my splendid brews. And ye need it, so drink. I’m not leaving until the mug is empty.”
“Did you put any cocoa in it?”
“Ye know we’re nearly out.”
“Nell,” he said with a put-upon sigh, flipping a page in his book, “go on with you. I’ll drink it later.”
“And ye might as well know yer son is up and about,” she added, hands on her hips, foot tapping, waiting for him to drink. When he didn’t reply, she forged on. “What do ye wish me to do with the lass who appeared last eve?”
Silvan closed his tome, refusing to look at her lest he betray how very much he enjoyed looking at her. He appeased himself with the promise of safely stealing several surreptitious glances when she walked out the door. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”
“Not until ye drink.”
“How is she?”
“She’s sleeping,” Nell told his profile. The man rarely looked at her that she noticed; she’d been speaking to his profile for years. “But she doesn’t seem to have suffered lasting injury.” Thank the saints, Nell thought, feeling fiercely protective toward the lass who’d arrived with no clothing and the blood of her maidenhead on her thighs. Neither she nor Silvan had missed it when they tucked the wee unconscious lass into bed. They’d glanced uneasily at each other, and Silvan had fingered the fabric of his son’s plaid with a perplexed expression.
“Has she said anything about what happened to her last eve?” he asked, rubbing his thumb idly over the symbols embossed on the leather binding of the book.
“Nay. Although she mumbled in her sleep, naught of it made sense.”
Silvan’s eyebrows rose. “Think you she was…er, harmed in some way that has affected her mind?”
“I think,” Nell said carefully, “the fewer questions ye ask her for now, the better. ’Tis plain to see she needs a place to stay, what with having no possessions nor clothing. I ask ye grant her shelter as ye did me that eve, many years past. Let her story come out when she’s ready.”
“Well, if she’s aught like you, that means I’ll never know,” Silvan said with studied casualness.
Nell caught her breath. In all these years he’d not once asked what had happened the night she was given sanctuary at Castle Keltar. For him even to make such an offhand reference to it was rarer than a purple pine marten. Privacy was ever honored at the MacKeltars’—sometimes a blessing, ofttimes a curse. The Keltar men were not wont to pry. And many were the times she’d wished one of them had.
When, a dozen years ago, Silvan had found her lying in the road, beaten and left for dead, she hadn’t felt like talking about it. By the time she’d healed and been ready to confide, Silvan—who’d held her hand and fought for her while she’d lain fevered—had retreated coolly from her bedside and never spoken of it again. What was a woman to do? Blurt out her woeful tale as if she were looking for sympathy?
And so a polite and infinite distance had formed between housekeeper and laird. As should be, she reminded herself. She cocked her head warily, warning herself not to read too much into his mild statement.
When she said nothing, Silvan sighed and instructed that she procure suitable clothing for the lass.
“I already dug out some of yer wife’s old gowns. Now, would ye please drink? Dinna be thinking I’ve not noticed that ye haven’t been feeling yerself of late. My brew will help if ye quit dumping it in the garderobe.”
He flushed.
“Silvan, ye hardly eat, ye scarce sleep, and a body needs certain things. Will ye just try it and see if it doesn’t help?”
He raised one white brow, giving her a satyrlike look. “Pushy wench.”
“Cantankerous old fox.”
A faint smile played about his lips. He raised the mug, held his nose, and tipped the contents back. She watched his throat work for several minutes before he grimaced and plunked it down. For a brief moment, their eyes met.
She turned around and swept toward the door. “Dinna be forgetting about the lass,” she reminded stiffly. “You need to see to her, assure her she has a place here for however long need be.”
“I shan’t forget.”
Nell inclined her head and stepped out the doorway.
“Nellie.”
She froze, her back to him. The man hadn’t called her Nellie in years.
He cleared his throat. “Have you done something different with yourself?” When she didn’t reply, he cleared his throat again. “You look…er, that is you look rather…” He trailed off, as if regretting even beginning.
Nell spun back around to face him, her brows drawn together, lips pursed. He opened and closed his mouth several times, his gaze drifting over her face. Might he truly have noticed the wee change she’d made? She thought he never noticed her. And if he did, would he think she was a silly old woman fussing with herself? “Rather what?” she demanded.
“Er…I do believe…the word might be…fetching.” Softer somehow, he thought, his gaze skimming her up and down. Ye Gods, but the woman was temptingly soft to begin with.
“Have ye lost yer mind, old man?” she snapped, thoroughly discombobulated, and when Nell was thoroughly discombobulated, she wielded crankiness like a sword. “I look the same as I do every day,” she lied. Straightening her spine, she forced herself to glide regally out the door.
But the moment she knew she was out of sight, she rushed down the stairs, skirts a-flying, hair tumbling loose, hands to her throat.
She patted at the wispy strands of hair she’d snipped shorter that morn—similar to the wee lass’s, admiring the look. If such a minor change drew—by God, a compliment!—from Silvan MacKeltar, she might just stitch herself that new gown of softest lapis linen she’d been considering.
Fetching, indeed!
Gwen awakened slowly, surfacing from a montage of nightmares in which she’d been running around nude (naturally, at her heaviest weight, never after a week of successful dieting), chasing Drustan,
and losing him through doors that disappeared before she could reach them.
She took a deep breath, sorting through her thoughts. She’d left the States because she despised her life. She’d embarked upon a trip to Scotland to lose her virginity, see if she had a heart, and shake up her world.
Well, she’d certainly accomplished all her goals.
No simple cherry picker for me, she thought. I get a time-traveling genius who comes with a world of problems and sends me back through time to fix them.
Not that she minded.
She’d decided the words soul mate and Drustan MacKeltar were synonymous. She’d finally met a man who made her feel with an intensity she’d never imagined, was brilliant, yet wasn’t cold in his brilliance. He knew how to tease and be warm and passionate. He found her beautiful, and he was a phenomenal, erotic lover. Simply, she’d met the perfect man and lost him, all in three days. He’d awakened more emotions in her in that short time than she’d felt in her entire life.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Although the room was dim, the muted golden light of a fire spilled about the chamber. She blinked at the profusion of purple surrounding her, then recalled Drustan’s fascination with the purple running suits in Barrett’s. His insistence on purple trews or a T-shirt, a request she’d refused.
That sealed it. She was definitely in Drustan’s world now.
A sumptuous violet velvet coverlet was tucked beneath her chin. Above her, a lavender canopy of sheer gauzy stuff draped the elegantly carved cherry bed. A lilac sheepskin—oh really, she thought, I know there are no lilac sheep—was spread across her feet. Purple pillows with silver braided trim were strewn about the headboard.
Small curio tables were draped in orchid and plum silks. Brilliant plum and black tapestries in complicated patterns adorned the two tall windows, and between them hung an enormous ornate gilt-framed mirror. Two chairs were arranged before the windows, centered around a table that held silver goblets and plates.
Purple, she mused, with sudden insight. Such an electrifying, energetic man would naturally choose to surround himself with the color that had the highest frequency in the spectrum.
It was a hot color, vivid and erotic.
Like the man himself.
She pressed her nose into the pillow, hoping to catch his scent in the linens, but if he’d slept in this bed it had been too long ago, or the coverings had been changed. She turned her attention to the frame of the exquisitely carved bed in which she lay. The headboard had numerous drawers and cubbyholes. A sweeping footboard was etched with delicate Celtic knotwork. She’d seen a bed like it once before.
In a museum.
This one was as new as anything one might find in a modern-day furniture gallery. Raking her bangs out of her face, she continued surveying the room. Knowing she was in the sixteenth century and seeing it were two very different things. The walls were fashioned of pale gray stone, the ceiling was high, and there were none of those moldings or baseboards that always looked so out of place in “renovated” castles frequented by tourists. Not one outlet, not one lamp, merely dozens of glass bowls filled with oil, topped by fat, blackened wicks. The floor was planked of honey-blond wood, polished to a high sheen, with rugs scattered about. A lovely chest sat near the foot of the bed, topped with a pile of folded blankets. More cushioned chairs were arranged before the fire. The fireplace was fashioned of smooth pink stone, with a massive hewn mantel above it. In it, a peat fire steamed, sheaths of heather stacked atop the dried bricks scenting the room. All in all, it was a deliciously warm room, rich and luxurious.
She glanced at her wrist to see what time it was, but apparently her watch had wafted off into the same quantum foam that had devoured her clothing and backpack. She was momentarily distracted by the garment she was wearing: A long, sheer white chemise edged with lace, it looked positively old-fashioned and frivolous.
She shook her head, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and felt painfully short when her toes dangled a foot above the floor. With an exasperated hop, she dropped down out of the high bed and hurried to the window. She pulled the tapestry aside to find the sun shining brightly beyond the paned windows. She fumbled with the latch a moment, then pushed it open and breathed deeply of the fragrant air.
She was in sixteenth-century Scotland. Wow.
Beneath her stretched a lovely terraced courtyard, enclosed by the four inner walls of the wing of the castle she was in. Two women were beating rugs against the stones, chatting as they kept an eye on a gaggle of children kicking a lopsided sort of ball about. She peered at it, squinting. Eeew, she thought, recalling that Bert had said he’d read that medieval children had played with balls fashioned from bladders of animals and such.
She shook herself abruptly. She needed to know what the date was. While she stood gaping out the window, peril could be drawing ever nearer her Highland lover.
She was about to tug the coverlet off the bed and don it toga-style when she noticed a gown—lavender, of course—lying across the stuffed armchair near the fire, aside a miscellany of other items.
She hurried to the chair, where she fingered the items, trying to decide the order in which she was supposed to put them on.
And there were no panties, she realized with dismay. She could hardly be expected to swish around, bare-bottomed beneath her gown. She glared at the clothing, as if irritation alone might conjure a pair of panties from thin air. She glanced about the room with an entrepreneur’s eye but reluctantly concluded that even if she snatched up a table covering, she’d have to knot it about her like a diaper.
She slipped off her nightgown, then slid the soft white undergarment over her head. A simple shift, it clung to her body and fell to midankle. Over it went the gown, then the sleeveless overtunic of darker purple, embroidered with silver threads. Stunned that it didn’t drag on the floor, she plucked up the hem and snorted when she saw it had been neatly sheared off. Apparently people had already noted how short she was. She tied the laces on the overtunic beneath her breasts.
The slippers were a joke, sizes too big, but would have to do. She swiped the silk swath from a table and ripped the sheer fabric. As she was balling it up and stuffing it in the toes, her stomach growled mightily, and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.
But she couldn’t just stroll out into the corridor without a plan.
Order of the day: a bathroom, coffee, then at the earliest possible opportunity find Drustan and tell him what had happened.
Tell him…what danger he is in was probably what he’d been saying before he’d melted in the circle of stones. Show him…had obviously meant her backpack. She sighed, wishing she had it. But Drustan was a brilliant man with a fine logical mind. Surely, he would see the truth in her story.
In retrospect, it infuriated her that Drustan hadn’t told her the whole truth. However, she grudgingly acknowledged, chances were good that if he had told her, she would have, with infinite condescension, debated the implausibility of time travel for however long it had taken her to drive him to the nearest psychiatric ward.
She would never have believed he knew how to move in the fourth dimension. Who and what was this man to whom she’d given her virginity?
There was only one way to find out. Find him and talk to him.
Yo, Drustan. You don’t know me, but a future you will be enchanted, wake up in the twenty-first century, and send me back to save you and keep your clan from being destroyed.
She frowned. It wasn’t something she’d believe, if a man showed up in her time with such a story, but Drustan must have known what he was talking about. It was clear that he’d wanted her to tell the “past” him the truth. There was nothing else he could have been trying to say.
She was starved, both for food and a glimpse of Drustan.
And it was urgent that she discover the date.
Jamming the slippers on her feet, she hurried out into the corridor.
13
Sle
eping past sunrise was not a thing Drustan did often, but troubled dreams had disrupted his slumber and he’d slept until long past dawn.
He’d pushed the vague memories away and concentrated instead on the pleasant thoughts of his upcoming wedding. Silvan longed to hear the castle filled with voices again, Nell would be delighted by wee ones scampering about, and Drustan MacKeltar wanted bairn of his own. He would teach his sons to fish and calculate the motion of heavenly bodies. He would teach his daughters the same, he vowed.
He wanted children, and by Amergin, he would get his bride to the altar this time! No matter that he knew naught of her. She was young, of child-bearing age, and he would lavish her with respect and courtesy. Double it, for having him.
And mayhap one day she might come to have feeling for him. Mayhap she was young enough that she might be…er, trainable like a young foal. If she couldn’t read and write, she might like to learn. Or she could be weak of sight and not notice the eccentricities of the occupants of Castle Keltar.
And mayhap his wolfhounds would take to sailing longboats across the loch, sporting Viking attire. Waving flags of surrender. Ha.
Anya was his last chance, and he knew it. Because they were Highlanders who kept much to themselves, because of the centuries of rumors, because of the string of broken betrothals, fathers of well-bred young ladies were loath to pledge their daughters to him. They sought for their daughters safe, respectable men to whom rumors didn’t cling as tenacious as burrs on a woolen.
Yet the Elliott, laird of an ancient clan of noble lineage, had decided to overlook it all (for two manors and a fair amount of coin) and a match had been promised. Now Drustan merely had to hide his unusual abilities long enough to make Anya Elliott care for him, or at least long enough to get a few bairn. He knew better than to hope for love. Time had taught him that well.
Love, he mused. What would it be like to have a woman look at him with admiration? Appreciate who he was? Each time he’d begun to believe a woman might care about him, she’d seen or heard something that had frightened her witless and abandoned him, crying, Pagan! Sorcerer!
The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 105
